Join with your friends in practice. Do not seek joy in duality. It is not a relative thing. Joy comes from merging with the infinite deep within the self. Be like water, adapting to any form, yet retaining your essential nature.
The text reads (from Richard Wilhelm’s translation):
“Often a man finds himself weighing the choice between various kinds of pleasures, and so long as he has not decided which kind he will choose, the higher or the lower, he has no inner peace. Only when he clearly recognises that passion brings suffering, can he make up his mind to turn away from the lower pleasures and to strive for the higher. Once this decision is sealed, he finds true joy and peace, and inner conflict is overcome.
Water sets the example for the right conduct under such circumstances. It flows on and on, and merely fills up all the places through which it flows; it does not shrink from any dangerous spot nor from any plunge, and nothing can make it lose its own essential nature. It remains true to itself under all conditions. Thus likewise, if one is sincere when confronted with difficulties, the heart can penetrate the meaning of the situation. And once we have gained inner mastery of a problem, it will come about naturally that the action we take will succeed.
Meditation
